previously screened

The urgent story of the mystical Wixarika People and their struggle against the Mexican government and Canadian mining companies.

Synopsis

The film presents the emblematic case of the defense of Wirikuta, sacred territory to the Huichol people, against the threat of mining exploitation. This native people to this land, launches a spiritual crusade to protect life, evidencing the internal contradictions in our materialistic world.

The Ramirez family takes us into their ritual pilgrimage that takes them to Wirikuta and their encounter with their spiritual ancestors that inhabit this territory. We submerge ourselves, alongside this family, in the Cosmovision of the Wixárika culture. According to them, Earth and every being that inhabits it, each element of nature, is sacred. In Wirikuta, peyote flourishes and this is the central element of the Wixárika spirituality, since it is the access to dialogue with their gods.

Transversal to this millenary ritual that has been repeated generation after generation, the conflict appears: The threat of the mining companies that, if their exploitation efforts are successful, could contaminate and destroy Wirikuta, transforming it into a sterile and uninhabitable territory. Defiled and profaned.

The documentary also brings us closer to the different actions that are available to the public and that have been started by the Wixárika people to bring the defense of Wirikuta and its meaning out in the open.

Cinema Politica is the largest campus and community based documentary screening network in the world. We are a Montreal-based non-profit media arts organization dedicated to the dissemination of independent political works by Canadian and international filmmakers.